In the late summer of 1849 in London, the seven Pre-Raphaelite Brothers and a few of their friends began work on the first issue of a journal that would soon become The Germ. Other names were suggested at the time – The P. R. B. Journal, Thoughts Towards Nature, First Thoughts, The Truth-Seeker – but The Germ ultimately prevailed. As these several titles suggest, the journal was animated by philosophical and cultural ambitions. Like the PRB itself, The Germ aimed to resist the main currents of mid-Victorian aesthetics; it was published to give voice to a new school of art. In 1882, one critic called it ‘the first, and indeed the only, official manifesto or apologia of Pre-Raphaelitism’ with a distinct ‘propagandist aim’. Indeed, The Germ can be nominated as the first British periodical dedicated to a specific artistic programme. It therefore stands behind the many avant-garde journals or ‘little magazines’, such as The Savoy and BLAST, that would come to define aesthetic movements of later periods. In the event, The Germ had a very short run: only four issues appeared, from January through May 1850, each selling less than 100 copies. Yet these four issues maintained an influence over many artists and writers of the nineteenth century, and the journal continues to be read, imitated and reprinted. The Germ thus became a self-consciously foundational part of the Pre-Raphaelite legacy.